You can listen to this episode on our Binary System Podcast channel at Anchor.fm! We’ve got a slightly longer episode this week, since there was a slightly big event going on in California last week. You may have heard about it…San Diego ComicCon 2019, which also happened to be the big convention’s 50th anniversary! Elizabeth
“Yes. Erm. Ms. Arkin.” He coughed. “I’m afraid you don’t have any magical infusion whatsoever. Your entire education here has been a huge mistake.” This is how nineteen-year-old Alison Arkin finds out that – despite what the recruiters told her – she doesn’t have magical powers. All she has is an (admittedly impressive) eidetic memory
Dark Horse Books has been releasing a steady stream of stand-alone short stories by Neil Gaiman, each of them illustrated by a prominent artist. The latest one (due out on August 20th) manages to once again do the impossible: it takes a story that I already thought was perfect and makes it even better. Click
By an odd coincidence, all three of the Hugo-nominated novelettes I saved for last are about memory and death. Hard-hitting stuff here. They’re also about the stories we tell and why we tell them: to remember the past, to link us to each other, and to make us reach for something more than just survival.
“Dr. York. What does the upturn on that chart represent?” “That…that is when the oceans begin to boil.” Mary Robinette Kowal’s Hugo-nominated novel starts in a 1952 America that’s just slightly different from ours. Thomas E. Dewey defeated Harry S. Truman, and then gave famous rocket scientist (and former Nazi) Wernher von Braun the leeway
This last flood, the one you call the Big Water, ended the Fifth World and began the Sixth. It opened the passage for those like myself to return to the world. The climate disaster that left a lot of the world underwater also left the Navajo reservation mostly untouched. Not that the Dinétah is an
I’m going to space out the Hugo Award Best Novelette entries a little this year to try to make them last. Click the jump for a brief review of three stories of invasion, transformation, and memory.
“So the fairy silver brought you a monster of fire for a husband, and me a monster of ice. We should put them in a room together and let them make us both widows.” Naomi Novik’s Hugo-nominated novel is a Russian-themed fairy tale that starts with three women: a moneylender, a poor farmer’s daughter, and
Memorial Day weekend is the perfect time to sit back, relax, and finish reading one of the longer novels I’ve got in my to-be-read pile. …so of course I decided to skip that plan and read a bunch of short stories instead. Click the jump for a look at this year’s Hugo Award nominees for